How to setup a dual-boot DOS 6.22 / Windows 98SE hard drive

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

I'm going nuts trying to figure out how.

DOS and Win98 FDISK won't let me make more than one primary partition. Huh? I thought you could have up to 4 primary paritions in FAT?

I want to have a 700 MB FAT16 primary partition for DOS, and a 3.3 GB FAT32 primary partition for Windows 98SE.

I would use Knoppix or some other live CD to do this, but this laptop lacks the RAM to run it.

I'm thinking of putting the FAT32 partition first, since the Windows 98 CD seems to expect drive C to be where Windows is going.

The DOS partition really doesn't need to be 700 MB, but this laptop hangs on Windows 98SE (or most other OS) installers when ran off CD. Even when the installer is started using a floppy boot disk. I copied the Windows 98SE CD to the 700 MB partiton using xcopy, and voila, it installs.

Anyway...

I'm looking for ideas.

Another question is how to install GRUB or LILO in the MBR to allow me to select one or the other, when there is no Linux installed on the hard drive.

I'm sure someone else on here has done this before.

[bellersley]

Use F-Disk and make 2 partitions. Make one primary (the C drive) and the other secondary (the D drive). Install DOS 6.22 like you normally would, it will automatically go to the C drive. Then, once DOS is installed, you can go ahead and install Win98. When you run the install program for 98, it'll ask you where you want to install Windows. You can then select the D drive.

You can then dual-boot.

This is how I have it on my laptop and it works perfectly.

The general rule of thumb to keep in mind when you want to dual (triple or whatever as well) boot is to always install the oldest OS FIRST as typically an older OS (like DOS) only knows how to operate in the first primary partition of your drive. You can use Partition Magic to mess around with this and install DOS at a later date, but I've had a few problems and ended up loosing a lot of data so I just do it right from the start.

[kcbooboo]

No matter what size you want, you can only have ONE primary partition. Everything else has to be a secondary/extended partition. There is a limit to the primary and logical partition sizes in DOS 6.22 that only support the FAT16 file system.

After FDISK creates the primary and reboots, you run it again and create a secondary/extended partition. Then you create up to four logical drives in this extended partition. DOS and Windows all know how to deal with these areas and will almost treat them identically.

Be aware that if you ever have TWO hard drives in your system, the BIOS and DOS recognizes the primary and secondary partitions in a specific order. First, the primary on drive 0, then the primary on drive 1, then the secondary drives on drive 0, then the secondary drives on drive 1.

I had one system with two drives and wanted 8 partitions, the first four on drive 0 and the second four on drive 1. I ended up with primary and secondary partitions on drive 0 and only secondary partitions on drive 1. This got the boot order the way I wanted it.

I also recall there was a way to configure a Win98 installation to boot up in DOS, then you could type WIN to start Windows. But you had to install Win98 and configure it to come up using its version of DOS.

By the way, you can make a DOS boot disk from Win98. The second edition knows about the FAT32 file system which will support partition sizes greater than 511 MB.

Bob M.

[bellersley]

I also recall there was a way to configure a Win98 installation to boot up in DOS, then you could type WIN to start Windows. But you had to install Win98 and configure it to come up using its version of DOS.

Indeed there is. On my laptop, it's configured to boot into DOS all the time, but I have Win98 on there for network connectivity and for some GE software.

To make Win98 boot into DOS mode by default...

Open up your MSDOS.SYS file in VI or whatever editor you use (you DO use VI right? ). Change the line that says BootGUI=1 to BootGUI=0. Save and reboot. Sometimes you won't have a BootGUI line in your MSDOS.SYS. This is fine, just go ahead and add it at the end. You might need to mess with file attributes.

If you need to have AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS load any drivers or set environment variables, just create those files and stick them in the C:\ root directory...they'll load upon startup in MS DOS mode.

This will cause your computer to boot into DOS mode. It will show the Windows 98 logo first.. (If you really don't want to see that, add Logo=0 in there as well. If you need to load Windows, just type WIN at the command prompt and you'll be on your way.

[Jonathan KC8RYW]

Is it booting REAL DOS, or Win98 DOS?

[kcbooboo]

If you've installed Win98, the system will boot the DOS that came with that, which is something like Version 7. It is DOS and will work just as good as 6.22 for programming, however you'd need most of the utility programs that are scattered around in Windows folders for a real installation. Most of the time, the core files (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS) are all you really need on the system to get it to boot up and let you run programs.

Bob M.

[bellersley]

I've programmed everything from MCX1000s to Astro Sabers on Win98 dos, I've never had a problem with it... It seems to be 100% the same as 6.22.

[billy7834]

Not to be confused with MS-DOS, right?

[bellersley]

Not to be confused with MS-DOS, right?

What isn't? Windows 98 DOS *is* MS-DOS. It's just another version of it.

[billy7834]

I thought that MS-DOS was not "true" DOS and should be avoided for programming. Or, is that only true for the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option available in Win98?

[bellersley]

Restart in DOS mode in Windows 98 is as pure DOS as it gets.

The "not real dos" that people speak of is running either "cmd" or "command" in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

While the "restart in DOS mode" isn't identical to DOS 6.22, as long as you have environment variables setup properly, there is no difference and you won't have any problems running RSS.

[billy7834]

Restart in DOS mode in Windows 98 is as pure DOS as it gets.

So, is there any need to set up dual booting in Win98 then?

[bellersley]

Personaly, I don't see the need. There's nothing that DOS 6.22 gives you that you can't get with Windows 98 in MS-DOS mode. Some people prefer to have DOS6.22 but that's just a personal choice.

[kcbooboo]

There is one big difference between DOS 6.22 and DOS 7.xx: DOS 7.xx knows about, and can deal with, the FAT32 file system which has been available since Win98SE. All previous DOS versions only know about the FAT12 (used on small floppy discs) and FAT16 (used on larger floppy discs and hard drives) file systems.

If you've setup your Windows system to use FAT32, you can access it with DOS 7.xx. This means you can copy your programming files to the hard drive, make a bootable DOS 7.xx floppy disc, insert that, and boot from it. Then you just change from A: to C:, go to the appropriate folder with CD \MRSS\xxxxxx, and start the appropriate program running. If everything is configured to work on the hard drive, you won't even notice that you've booted from the floppy. To go back to Win98, remove the floppy and reboot with CTRL-ALT-DEL. I do this on my laptop that's running WinXP with the FAT32 file system and it works great. Of course, you have to have a floppy drive in the computer to do this; many laptops consider this an option, or share the drive bay with a CD-ROM.

Bob M.

[billy7834]

This means you can copy your programming files to the hard drive, make a bootable DOS 7.xx floppy disc, insert that, and boot from it. Bob M.

Why do you even need to do that when you can just use the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option available in Win98 as stated above?

[kcbooboo]

Because, if you read a bit further, you'd have seen that I use a floppy to boot DOS because my laptop runs WinXP, and that operating system does NOT let you cross-boot to DOS or even provide a stand-alone DOS environment.

Bob M.

[440roadrunner]

I don't see the need for any of this. You can setup '98 so it boots right to C:\ on startup. Perform a standard, clean, Whenhozed98 installation, and get it running as you like.

Then, follow these instructions:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article01-412

which says:

===============================================
Open the file C:\MSDOS.SYS with a text editor, like notepad.
You'll probably have to remove the Read-only, System, and Hidden attributes of the file before editing it.
Find the line that reads BootGUI=1, and change it to BootGUI=0.
Save the file and reboot your computer. Type Win to start Windows.
===============================================


Once upon a time, when I ran Whinehoed98, most of my machines booted to a DOS prompt on start. One thing left out above, is to change the file so you can edit it. Find the file, right click the file, and choose "properties". Uncheck all the attribute boxes, including hidden, read only, etc, so that you can edit the file. You can edit the file with notepad. Might be a good idea to copy the unmolested file someplace else in case you screw it up.

Notice, however, that if you set this up, you'll have to set up a config.sys and autoexec.bat, for any special drivers, like for a CDROM. You will NOT have cdrom access at the C:\ prompt unless you do this.

[bellersley]

Bob was stating that you can boot off of a floppy into dos and still access your hard drive if you use xp primarily. That's actually an excellent idea i'd never thought of before.

[440roadrunner]

Bob was stating that you can boot off of a floppy into dos and still access your hard drive if you use xp primarily.

Yes, but you can only do that with XP if the hard drive is formatted to FAT32, not NTFS. However, as I understand the original question, Johnathan wants to install '98, not Xtra Putrid. Otherwise, if you DO want to dual boot MSDOS and Whinehosed98, there are some boot managers available, used to be some for free.

The "not real dos" that people speak of is running either "cmd" or "command" in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

And, any form of a "DOS WINDOW"

[440roadrunner]

I just found this from another forum, right from the Microhorse's mouth:


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/217210/en-us

[kyakruu]

Make one primary (the C drive) and the other secondary (the D drive). Install DOS 6.22 like you normally would, it will automatically go to the C drive. Then, once DOS is installed, you can go ahead and install Win98. When you run the install program for 98, it'll ask you where you want to install Windows. You can then select the D drive.